


This Life to the Next

by sunbeamsandmoonrays



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Jon Arryn Lives, Jon and Sansa are reincarnations of Jonnel and Sansa, Jon has an existential crisis in almost every chapter, Jonsa Week 2019, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sansa tries to be aloof
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 17:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21480379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbeamsandmoonrays/pseuds/sunbeamsandmoonrays
Summary: "We're dreaming of being married to each other, Sansa.""We can't control what we did in a past life, Jon."ORJon and Sansa confide in each other when they begin to have dreams of their past lives.  As their shared experience brings them closer, their burgeoning feelings for each other threatens to tear them apart.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jonnel "One-Eye" Stark/Sansa Stark
Comments: 35
Kudos: 141
Collections: JonsaWeek2019





	This Life to the Next

_“Till death do us part, _

_they say. _

_I say, _

_I will love you till this life to the next. _

_And if next life won’t grace me with you, _

_I will still love you till the next one, _

_And the next, and the next, _

_Till death finally give up on us.” _

_\- Cynthia Go_

* * *

The dreams begin shortly after that fateful day when Jon discovered his quiet direwolf pup wandering around in the underbrush. They are of a woman, with pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair. He has no memory of meeting this woman in the waking world, but he knows in his heart that he loves her, and when she gazes at him, he knows she loves him, too.

His dreams of the mystery woman are mostly innocent; in one they are sitting quietly together in front of the heart tree, in another they are in the Great Hall for a feast and she has her head thrown back in laughter at something he says. There are countless others that show the daily lives of a lord and lady of a castle. Completely innocuous. This one tonight is different.

They are in his bed chamber, which in this dream world is a far larger and grander room than the one he actually sleeps in. _The Lord’s Chamber_, his mind whispers. But he doesn’t dwell on this detail. His entire focus is on _her_: how soft her skin feels as he runs his hands over her body, how her normally bright blue eyes are darkened by lust, how her fingernails digging into his shoulders and her thighs squeezing his waist urge him on as they move together to reach that shared bliss.

Her breath hitches as he hits a certain spot inside her warmth, causing her movements to falter. “Jon!” she gasps.

He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his head in the silk of her hair. He’s so close, but he needs her to come before him. He mouths at her collar bone before dragging his lips up her neck towards her jaw. She whimpers. “Sansa,” he groans against her cheek.

That name, unexpected yet so, so _terribly familiar_, is enough to startle Jon out of his slumber. As he lays panting in is his bed, confusion, arousal, and dread warring within him, he comes to the conclusion that these nighttime visions are more than the ordinary dream. There is no other way to explain how real they all feel, how _she_ feels. _It’s as if they’re memories of another life_, he thinks. He immediately scoffs at his own mental observation. _It’s impossible. _

_Unless it isn’t… _

Running a weary hand over his face, he decides it wouldn’t hurt to check to see if his theory is correct, and he forms a plan on how to accomplish this. He ends up going over his (rather simple) plan the rest of the night, because every time he closes his eyes, he remembers that his dream woman’s hair looked red in the firelight.

* * *

Jon arrives in the library just as Maester Luwin is finishing his daily lessons with Bran.

“Jon!” Bran calls out happily when he notices his older brother approach them. “Will you help me with my archery?”

“Maybe later,” Jon promises. “But first I need to ask Maester Luwin a question.”

“Alright,” Bran agrees easily. “See you!” And with that, the young boy skips out of the library, glad to have a free afternoon. Jon notices Luwin chuckle at Bran’s antics and his nerves ease somewhat at the maester’s good mood. He approaches the table where Luwin is seated at.

“Good afternoon, my lord,” the maester greets Jon with a nod and a kind smile.

“Good afternoon, Maester,” Jon returns quietly.

“What question do you need to ask me?”

Jon tries not to look suspicious as he asks, “Do you have a book on the Stark family tree that I can look at?”

Luwin gives him an inscrutable look, and Jon worries that he will ask him why he has need of it, because he couldn’t tell him (or anyone) the real reason, but a moment later the maester rises from his seat and shuffles off to disappear behind a book shelf. He lets out a small sigh of relief, but his relief soon turns to confusion when the maester does not reappear in a timely manner. Just as Jon thinks to ask if he needs assistance, Luwin returns with an enormous tome, and the booming sound it makes as he places it on the table echoes throughout the library.

When he’s once again seated, Luwin looks up to Jon and asks, “Do you know what time period you want to look in?”

Jon thinks for a moment. “After Aegon’s conquest,” he decides. He doesn’t remember wearing the famed crown of winter in any of his dreams, so it’s a safe assumption that they occur after Torrhen Stark knelt to the Targaryens, if they even happened at all.

After gesturing to Jon to take a seat in the chair vacated by Bran, Maester Luwin opens the book near the end and thumbs through pages until he reaches the right spot. Jon thanks the older man while pulling the heavy tome towards himself, and he begins carefully flipping through the fragile pages, keeping his eyes open for mention of a Lord of Winterfell named Jon Stark.

The library is now silent save for the sounds of rustling pages as Jon continues to skim through the book’s contents. Jon is grateful for it, because the quiet is making concentrating on his task easier. But Maester Luwin has other ideas. “You know,” he begins conversationally. “You are not the first person who has asked for _this very book_ this past week.”

So intent on his task, Jon barely registers what Luwin says and only comments with a vague, “That’s interesting.”

“I certainly thought so,” Luwin replies. He goes on, but the words never reach Jon’s ears as he finds what he’s looking for: a Lord Jonnel Stark, who lived almost two centuries ago, married to a Sansa Stark.

_Sansa Stark. _

Her name is all he can see while a queer stillness surrounds him. He can’t say he’s shocked to find Sansa’s name, because deep down he’s known that this is what would happen. Resignation and shame make him close his eyes, but he can still easily picture what’s written in slanted black ink in his mind. _It’s just a name_, he tries to convince himself. _Like how there are many Brandon Starks. Just because you dream of a Sansa in the past doesn’t mean that there’s a connection to the Sansa you already know._ Almost unbidden, his mind next conjures up an image of the very thing that kept him awake the night before, and his eyes snap open. It is then he finally understands what the maester told him earlier.

“Maester Luwin,” he blurts, belatedly realizing that he probably interrupted the man. “You said someone else asked for this book. Who?”

Visibly taken aback by the urgent tone in Jon’s voice, Luwin answers, “Why, your sister the Lady Sansa.”

Jon stumbles out of the chair and away from the table then, in haste to get away from that damned book and the maester’s words. Hearing Luwin’s cries of alarm and concern, Jon makes some hasty excuses claiming fatigue before fleeing the library. He only makes it about ten paces into the courtyard when the sight of his inner torment makes him stop abruptly in his tracks.

Sansa is with her direwolf Lady, and she is brushing the pup’s coat. He is too far away to hear it, but he can tell Sansa is singing one of her songs she adores so much. Feeling his gaze on her, Sansa looks up at him. She smiles. Surprised, he begins to smile back, until he notices her eyes. What he has always thought were Tully blue eyes are the very eyes he sees when he falls asleep at night. At this chilling realization, he turns in a random direction and walks away, feeling those eyes stare at him the entire time.

* * *

Jon is avoiding her, she’s sure. Usually this fact would not bother Sansa; their paths seldom cross, anyways, and they’ve never been as close to each other as with their other siblings. But now that she is actively seeking him out, he is nowhere to be found. He is rarely seen at mealtimes and when she knows he is sword training with Robb, Theon, and Ser Rodrik, she is inside the castle practicing her needlework with Septa Mordane. Arya may be brave enough to cross her mother and the septa by skipping her lessons and going to the training yard, but Sansa is not ready to risk their combined ire just yet. And there’s the fact that she wants to talk to Jon without their brother and Theon hovering nearby.

If only she had gone after him that day she saw him outside the library. He had acted so strangely when she smiled at him, and she has a feeling she knows why. _That is why I need to find him. I need him to know that he’s not experiencing this alone. _

It is by pure accident when she finally comes across him. She is walking Lady through the godswood when she spies Jon sitting on the moss covered stone beneath the heart tree, absentmindedly scratching behind Ghost’s ears. She takes this opportunity to study him unobserved.

She can see many similarities between Jon and the man she sees in her dreams at night. They both share the famed Stark features: dark of hair, long of face. Their lips have a similar shape. But in Sansa’s opinion, Jon’s curls look softer to the touch than the other man’s long hair. And Jon’s lips…well, Sansa blushes before she can finish that thought. Their eyes, however, are exactly the same: they both have dark gray eyes that seem kind and serious in equal measure. Jon is not looking at her now, but when their eyes met that day in the courtyard, Sansa was struck by the fact at how lovely they looked in the sunlight.

Sansa is brought out of her musings by Jon’s wolf. Ghost notices his littermate and companion first, and his abrupt departure from Jon’s side is what gets him to startle out of his deep contemplation. Sansa watches Jon out of the corner of her eye while their direwolves playfully reunite; he is still seated, so she takes it as a good sign.

“Hello, Jon,” she calls to him.

He looks at her warily. “Hello, Sansa.”

A nudge at her hip brings her attention downward. “And hello to you, Ghost,” she says as she crouches to the pup’s level. She gives him some loving scratches behind his ears and along his back, and when she looks back up at Jon he’s watching them with a faint smile on his face.

Once he’s satisfied with Sansa’s greeting, Ghost rushes towards Lady, and together they disappear through the trees. Sansa straightens.

“May I sit with you a moment?” she asks Jon. He stares at her instead of responding, and the ensuing silence between them is awkward enough that Sansa represses the urge to look away from Jon’s probing gaze. But in the next moment, Jon is scooting over to make room for her, and she gratefully takes the offered seat.

Another bout of silence follows, but this one is comfortable and not ridden with tension. Looking into the dark pool in front of her and seeing her reflection alongside his in the water soothes her further for some reason. It gives Sansa the courage to say her next words. “I had a dream like this,” she confesses quietly. She feels Jon tense next to her. “My lord husband and I were sitting in front of the heart tree, just talking. It was a good dream.”

She looks at Jon then. His face is devoid of emotion, but both his hands are clenched over his thighs. She asks knowingly, “Have you had a similar dream?”

He turns to her so abruptly that she startles. “How do you know that?” he demands with wide eyes.

“I saw you outside the library, remember? I made the same journey myself just a few days prior.”

Everything within him seems to deflate at her statement. Jon leans forward and props his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. He looks down at his hands as he asks, “Are you disgusted with me?”

Sansa’s brow furrows in confusion. “What? No, of course not! Why would you ask that?”

“Because…” Jon hangs his head in shame. “We’re dreaming of being married to _each other_, Sansa.”

Sansa feels herself blush and is grateful that Jon is not looking at her. “We can’t control what we did in a past life, Jon,” she says weakly.

Surprisingly, Jon laughs at that. “No, I guess we can’t.”

A third silence falls between them and Sansa watches as Jon’s smile fades and his expression turns into a brooding one that Sansa is familiar with.

“We can’t tell anyone about this.”

“No, we can’t,” she agrees. “They wouldn’t understand.” She places her hand on his forearm and squeezes it reassuringly. Jon glances at her hand before lifting his gaze to hers. Her heart flutters. “But I’m here if you need to talk to me. And I’d like to talk to you if I have another bad dream…or memory, I suppose.”

“You had a bad dream?” He takes her hand in between both of his, and the naked concern in his voice makes her want to throw her arms around him.

“Just one,” she tries to brush off. She thinks of that night, of her dream self being informed of her husband’s injury…_He may not make it through the night, my lady_, of waking with tears streaming down her face and a wail of grief getting caught in her throat. She shakes out of her musings when Jon’s hands squeeze hers. “But I’m alright now.”

“If you’re sure…” Jon says dubiously.

“I am.” At Jon’s continued look of doubt, she adds, “I will tell you what I dreamt one day, I promise.” She places her other hand on top of his. “Just knowing that I won’t be dealing with this alone is comfort enough, for now.”

Jon nods. “We’ll deal with this together,” he vows. They both smile hesitantly at each other.

As if sensing their conversation has reached its end, their direwolves come bounding through the trees towards them, interrupting whatever moment they had between them. Sansa withdraws her hands from his and stands, watching Lady as she ambles closer. She doesn’t see Jon’s longing expression behind her back.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


End file.
